Nicholas Haslam

I go to Topman at lunchtime and stare at these beautiful, beautiful people who work there and who are so well-dressed. And I think: 'Oh! I want to look like that! They're amazing, how well-dressed they are!'

I rent a Jacobean-fronted hunting lodge in Hampshire from the National Trust and like to go there as much as possible. I've grown to love it so much, especially when writing my memoirs there at weekends.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

I am so tired of ruggedly handsome heroes. I don't know too many ruggedly handsome people who are necessarily nice people. In fact, the beautiful people have a big handicap because they rely too much on their appearance and don't bother to become interesting.